Friday's route: a pump truck's day, start to finish

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Transcript

Big Bertha carries three thousand gallons. On Friday she'll pump eleven stops, make three trips to a treatment plant, and finish at four twenty-two. This is how that day gets planned, run and closed. It starts the afternoon before. Route Plan shows the week, a tile for each day, with its jobs and how much of your trucks' time they fill. Pick Friday, and it checks the day before it builds anything: who's driving, whether every job has a location, and where the trucks start. Press Plan day. In a few seconds every job has a driver, every stop has an arrival time, and each route is in the order with the least driving, on real roads. Then it shows how it built them. Time on site comes from your own crews' finished stops, so every stop is timed the way your crews really work. And it knows every truck's tank. A portable stop adds twelve gallons a unit. A septic pump-out adds the size of that tank. Before a truck would pass eighty-five percent, it puts in a dump stop, at a site that takes pumped waste and is open when the truck arrives. Jason gets Big Bertha, twelve stops and all three dumps. Steven gets fourteen stops, with less than two hours of driving. When it looks right, Push to drivers. Twenty-six stops go to two phones, and the plan reads Dispatched. Friday morning, the same routes are on the dispatch board. One lane for each driver, in the order they'll drive. Plans change. Jason's day runs long, so dispatch drags his last pump-out to Steven. It lands in Steven's lane, and on Steven's route on his phone. On the dispatch map, every truck and every stop. Open Jason, and his panel shows Big Bertha's tank right now, the gallons still to pump today, and his stops in order. Jason opens his phone to the same route. Eleven jobs, a lunch break and three dumps, in order, each with a planned time. At each stop he taps En Route, then Arrived, then Complete job. He marks the service done, and the stop turns done, on his phone and in the office. By eleven he's done six portable stops. Each restroom he services adds twelve gallons to the tank. At the Nguyens', a thousand-gallon septic tank. He pumps it and logs nine hundred forty gallons on the report. In Fleet, Big Bertha's tank reads one thousand one hundred sixty-eight gallons, with the stops that filled it. The gallons a driver logs count first. Without them, it uses the tank size on file. At noon the tank is only thirty-nine percent full. But the next stop is a fifteen-hundred-gallon tank, which would take it past eighty-five, so after lunch the route goes to the plant first. Start Pump-Out opens the dump with the City of Elyria plant already picked, and directions one tap away. If he needs a different site, the Disposal tab lists only the ones that take what a pump truck carries, with today's hours and the price per gallon. At the plant he enters the gallons and the ticket number. This plant asks for a photo of the ticket, so the dump can't be completed until the photo is attached. Done. The tank resets to zero, the dump stop closes itself on his route, and the load is saved to the truck with a manifest number. The afternoon runs the same way. Two more septic tanks, two thousand three hundred eighty gallons, and a second trip to Elyria. His last stop isn't a customer. It's the French Creek plant, with two thousand three hundred ninety gallons on board. Only when that dump is done does the app ask for his post-trip inspection. Every stop and every dump, done by four twenty-two. In the office, Big Bertha's record shows today's three dumps: five thousand nine hundred forty gallons, each with its site, its time and its manifest. Before the trucks are back in the yard, the office plans next week. Optimize Week builds Monday through Friday in one pass, and opens Monday's routes. Everything in this film runs on a few settings. Each truck's tank size and working hours, on the truck. Who drives which truck, day by day, in Vehicle Assignments. Every dump site, with what it takes, its hours and its price. And two switches on each one: whether the driver must photograph the ticket, and whether dispatch must approve the dump first. In Routing settings: the point to add a dump stop, eighty-five percent unless you change it, the gallons for each portable unit, and the lunch window. Cost rates put a dollar figure on every plan. Friday's routes came to an estimated seven hundred thirty-two dollars, over a hundred sixty-three miles. And service territories set the days a truck works an area. Southwest Wellington and Grafton runs Tuesdays and Fridays. On a weekly rate card you pick the service day, and the days that site's territory runs are marked, found from its ZIP code. Fewer miles. Dumps planned before the tank fills. And drivers who always know what's next.

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